Until recently, probably like for many of you, my imagination when it came to corn, aka maize, was limited to a bright yellow sunshine goodness, steamy and fresh on the cob soaked in butter and lightly salted, bursting with warm juices with every bite, the remnants of which I discover in my teeth hours after I am done. Or, perhaps, some ready-to-eat tinned sweet-corn kernels added to my jacket potato, tuna, chilli (sin)carne or simply adding a crunch and a juicy burst to my salad plate. In reality corn comes in a rainbow of colours and subtle gradient of tastes and despite one or two varieties being only an occasional dinner or snack companion for many of us in the West, corn or, as it is known in Spanish, maiz, has been the mainstay of the peoples of Central America and many other countries for centuries.
“The Mayans called themselves Hombres y Mujeres de Maiz, the Men and Women of Maize”.
The folkloric tale was explained to us by Miguel Tzul, the owner of a traditional restaurant Al Restaurante Jose Penguinos and heavy proponent of Guatemalan culture in Panajachel,a small tourist town on Lake Atitlan, where I am based during my fieldwork.
Real Corn Comes in a Rainbow of Colours (Photo Credit: Arvind Balaraman)
“As legend has it, the Gods separated the Earth from the Air and in doing so, decided to create life and animals. In their vanity, the male Gods wanted for the creatures they created to worship them, but the animals were too simple-minded, so they decided to create people. They tried to make them out of wood and they were good, strong, hardy people but had no heart or feelings and did not worship the Gods. So the Gods tried to wipe them all out to start again by flooding the Earth. As it turned out, the wooden people were very resourceful and climbed up to the top of the trees to avoid the flood and live. So the Gods turned them into monkeys, which is why monkeys seem similar to people. A female Goddess came along and said to the male Gods that she had the perfect material for them to use, corn. They mulled the maize into flour, then made it into a paste and moulded humans out of it. Corn was a much softer, heartier material and the people could see beyond the earth, into the ocean and were all-knowing. With this omniscient quality, the people were too God-like, so the Gods put them to sleep. Upon wakening, the corn people could no longer see as far or know as much and so they started to worship their Gods to gain extra insights and knowledge. This is how the Mayan people came to be.”
Mexico is the centre of world corn production with the Campensinos(peasant farmers) growing a staggering forty varieties with hundreds more in existence1. Guatemala is no different. The three most coloured varieties are white, yellow and black corn, with several sub-species of each. They are mainly eaten in the form of tortillas, which accompany almost every meal of indigenous Guatemalans.
16 Year Old Maria Serves Up The Daily Lunch (Photo Credit: Ioulia Fenton)
Maria and her family, who serve my daily luncheon of salads and vegetable caldo(traditional soup) at the Solola market, a small town 20 minutes by bus from Panajachel where I am doing my research, were shocked to learn that nothing of the kind can be found in England where I grew up. Corn meal is used to also make a variety of drinks and other preparations and there are estimated over 400 different recipes calling for corn all around the Americas2. Black tortillas are my favourite. They have a more unique, less yellow-corn-like, taste that I am used to and nothing gets my hunger up like the characteristic slapping sound of traditionally-clad smiling girls and women of all ages shaping the tortilla paste into perfectly round shapes for high-heat toasting.
The traditional process from field to lunch is long and labourious, exclusively carried out by women. The corn kernels are soaked in mineral lime (lye), which softens the shells and removes them, whilst simultaneously enriching the corn with copious amounts of calcium, making them highly nutritious. The shells are removed and the corn is further soaked in lye before thorough washing. The remaining cornmeal is mushed into a paste of perfect consistency before being expertly moulded, cooked and served.
“It is said that [along with a few other pre-requisites] a girl becomes a woman when the tortillas she makes are perfect …”3.
Do you have an interesting story of how foods influence indigenous cultures? Share it in the comments below.
Ioulia Fenton leads the food and agriculture research stream at the Center for Economic and Environmental Modeling and Analysis (CEEMA) at INESAD.
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Notes:
Patel, R. (2007) “Stuffed and Starved – The Hidden Battle for the World Food System”, Portobello Books: London.
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Until recently, probably like for many of you, my imagination when it came to corn, aka maize, was limited to a bright yellow sunshine goodness, steamy and fresh on the cob soaked in butter and lightly salted, bursting with warm juices with every bite, the remnants of which I discover in my teeth hours after I am done. Or, perhaps, some ready-to-eat tinned sweet-corn kernels added to my jacket potato, tuna, chilli (sin)carne or simply adding a crunch and a juicy burst to my salad plate. In reality corn comes in a rainbow of colours and subtle gradient of tastes and despite one or two varieties being only an occasional dinner or snack companion for many of us in the West, corn or, as it is known in Spanish, maiz, has been the mainstay of the peoples of Central America and many other countries for centuries.
